Growth Hacking Tools Don’t Exist

Growth Hacking Tools Don’t Exist.

There are no growth hacking tools. There are tools which can be used in growth hacking.

Once you have a growth hack, you will try to speed up one or more steps of the growth hack — this is where a tool comes in.

As a growth hacker, you are a craftsman: You find the right tools for the job and not the job based on the tools.

Here’s what I mean:

Growth hackers have the same tools available to them as everyone else, they just use them differently. Usually, a tool will be deployed in a way to make something easier, faster, cheaper, or scalable.

Example:

For example, a travel hacker would use a credit card to leverage travel benefits and hack into better deals to find loopholes to make the most from credit card companies. Remember, there are so many others who might have the same credit card but they’ll not be able to leverage these benefits.

Below are a few examples of the various tools I’ve used in 2017 for growth hacking campaigns. This will help you understand the difference between ‘what the tool is for’ vs ‘how a growth hacker uses it’:

#1. Tweepi

Tweepi can be used to get Twitter followers but can also be used for competitor spying and research

#2. Slack

Slack can be used for team communications, but it can also generate B2B leads using public Slack channels

#3. BuiltWith

BuiltWith can be used to find which technology is ‘built with’ but it can also generate huge databases of businesses and associated contact details

#4. Google News

Google News can be a good news reader but it can also be used to scrape journalist contact details for your PR outreach

#5. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a great social media scheduling tool but it can also be used to automate your social media calendar using RSS automation.

I call this process ‘DEEP HUNTING’ which means finding the growth hacking application of any tool.

It’s easy to search for ‘growth hacking tools’ and find a few tools which help you run some growth hack tricks. But a real growth hacker can turn any tool into a growth hacking tool by realizing the growth opportunity and application of the tool.

I avoid teaching tools and prefer teaching the mindset to find the right tools so future growth hackers can hunt their own!

Are you ready?

Here’s a starting point for you —

The following 40 tools have applications in growth hacking campaigns. I’ve used each one of these for my client campaigns and I leave it to you to find your application of the tools and how you can leverage them for your business growth:

Hotjar

Click to tweet

SERPDigger

CrazyEgg

Pay with a tweet

MozBar

BuzzSumo

Outbrain

Zapier

IFTTT

KissMetrix

Unbounce

Hello Bar

ConvertKit

Agora Pulse

SendGrid

Intercom.io

MixPanel

Ninja Outreach

SEMRush

HypeGrowth

Typeform

Slack

Colibri.io

Marketo

Tribeboost

PollDaddy

Optimisely

ListBuilder

Infusion Soft

Hubspot

Buffer

Marketo

Email Hunter

Hootsuite

SimilarWeb

VisiStat

WooRank

Reply.io

MixRank

There are many tools with clear growth hacking applications but many others where we need to deep hunt for them. This is where the real opportunity for growth is.

So go on and grab yours.

Cheers!

P.S. In case of any questions on how to use the above tools to SUPERCHARGE your growth hacking, email me at rishabh@mapplinks.com.